Floyd is Days Away
07:05 PM EDT - 11 September 1999

Sometimes people forget that even when talking about storms that something is days away. Floyd itself is (on current thinking) not going to affect the US until Mid Week (Tue-Wed). This gives the forecast lots of time to change, and I think--right now--that it will not directly landfall in Florida.

I'm resting heavily on climatology here in my thinking, with only one model suggesting landfall in Florida (AVN/MRF) I can't really go with that solution now. However, as the new week begins we will have time to track and watch the storm. The NHC official forecast suggest it will come close to Florida--closer than Dennis. This does NOT mean Florida is all clear, quite the contrary. Since there are always exceptions to climatology (Andrew (1992)/ 1935 Labor Day Keys Storm). Everyone along the southeast US coast and Bahamas will need to keep tabs on the storm for a while, and watch the model trends.

The key here will be if these models trend to the west, Florida landfall is more likely, otherwise it could be elsewhere. But since its mid-week we have the weekend to enjoy and ponder where it may go. Floyd is bigger (in both windspeed and size) than Dennis and has more potential to cause havoc. If you disagree or have your own thoughts or questions feel free to comment.

Since some have been comparing Floyd to Andrew (as far as track--note that I don't agree), here is an old satellite loop animation of Andrew.

TD#9 may become Gert later tonight or tomorrow, and the system in the Central Atlantic may form into something, but it will take time if it does at all.

The server debugging session never happened today, but we did alter the code of the site a bit to lessen the chance of an overload-related blackout.

For more information on Hurricane Floyd see the Current Storm Spotlight for Hurricane Floyd.
For more information on TD#9 see the Current Storm Spotlight for TD#9.
NRL Monterey Tracking Site (Navy) -- Very nice forecast track graphics for Floyd.
Some Forecast models: (NGM, AVN, MRF, ECMWF, ETA)
DoD weather models (NOGAPS, AVN, MRF)
GFDL Model & Plot for Floyd and for TD#9
Multiple Model Forecast Composite from Michael Bryson

Weather Channel Caribbean Sat Image
Intellicast Caribbean IR Loop
Intellicast Atlantic IR Loop

More Sat images: [N.A. visible] (visible -- Daytime Only) [N.A. infrared] (infrared), and [N.A. water vapor] (water vapor)--Nasa source.

- [mac]